After a string of good movies and , both SRK and Rani have been acknowledged as the best actors in bollywood at present and when I knew that Paheli featured them in the lead, I decided not to give it a miss.
The theater seem deserted when I reached there, which was unusual for a movie *ing SRK, even in calicut!. Anyway, I was happy not to wait in a queue braving the cold monsoon rains. The movie opens with a pre-marriage ceremony of Rani(Lachi??) with a lot of women in BRIGHT clothes singing and dancing. The movie is set in a time which has long gone by..
After sometime, We get the first glimpse of SRK(kishan) and the theater went...SILENT..hmm, getting curiouser and curiouser. Everything goes well and Kisan and Lachi get married off..
In the long journey back to the groom’s house, Lachi discovers that Kishan was not exactly a ladie’s man, more intersted in various expense accounts than his wife. The marriage party takes a break at some sort of oasis/temple during the journey, where Lachi discovers some disturbing events like getting shat by a crow!!
Finally the party reaches the groom’s house and Lachi finds out that her husband is set to go for a long journey the next day without even ...a kiss of goodbye!Ignoring her pleas, and
egged by anupam kher SRK sets off and reaches the same temple they passed earlier. Now it so happens that a ’’Mayavi’’ resides at that spot and hearing SRK’s story decides to transform himself into SRK’s body and have some fun.
The mayavi reaches back home and after some initial doubts was welcomed back. He confesses his identity to rani who preferred him to the boring guy she wed who seemed not to care about her. Time passes by, with some tricks by the wizard thrown in here and there and finally rani gets pregnant. The real guy hears that his wife is pregnant and naturally is upset. He reaches back home just during a difficult delivery by rani, but everyone dismisses him as a fraud and finally decides to go to the king to settle the offer. On the way, they meet none other than Mr Amithab Bachan who traps the mayavi in a bag.
Rani delivers a kid and when SRK returns she confesses that she had known the identity of the impostor SRk reveals that he was indeed the mayavi in her husbands body. And they lived happily for years..
The movie is apparently based on an old novel. Though such fantasies feel good on print, on a visual medium, it falls flat. Having seen ’’Njan Gandharvan’’, a brilliant malayalam movie during my childhood the theme lost its novelty on me. The cinematography is ok, with one getting tired of the usual bright colours and the gold ornaments after some time. The songs follow a similair story, though they are good to listen, doesnot gel with the movie. The acting by the cast was nothing special...
My verdict: Avoid!!